You want hot days to get your fruit ripe but then you want it to cool off nicely at night so that the grapes stay on the vine longer and develop complexity.
Being able to speak to all my fans is really cool - you always hear people cheering for you on the court, but to have messages of support in between tournaments is really motivating.
I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you've made a billion dollars, you've probably become uncool.
I'm glad you asked that question, because of any musical situation I've been in, the communication feels great here with Russell. He really pays close attention to what I'm doing because he cares.
Life with a scientist who is often changing jobs and is frequently away at meetings and on lecture tours is not easy. Without a secure home base, I could not have made much progress.
If I'm tapping anything, it's the frustration of people who have something to say at work or home or in some social setting and just can't do it. I do it for them. I don't take prisoners.
When someone tells me, 'Oh, we have so many problems on Earth; space exploration costs too much money,' I say, 'I absolutely agree with you. But I still hope we do it.'
The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
You can get a certain amount of pleasure as a mathematical spectator, reading and watching some of the most beautiful arguments that have been created in the history of humanity. But that's too passive.
There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.
This is like my dad's race team where we had one Legend car. If we wrecked it, we couldn't race the next week unless we had enough parts to put it back together again.
Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.
As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.
I was called a 'CD' by a suicidal teenager, who is alive today because I became her 'Chosen Dad,' who loved her. We all have the potential to re-parent ourselves and others.
When I was a kid growing up, my dad being a football coach, he asked the same question of all the assistants that he ever hired: 'Is your goal to be a head football coach?'
If you had told me at 45 years old that I would have to go on tour to get rest, I would've said, 'That's not how it works.' But nothing can be more gratifying. I'm a very hands-on dad.
Young men are obsessed with their dads, and they remain obsessed if the dad is not around. Remember that there was a lot of discussion about how George W. Bush might have invaded Iraq to atone for the failures of his dad.
But while mum and dad were incredibly caring, it was also a very chaotic household where everyone fought about everything. So I know what it's like to internalize all that chaos.
When I was 18, I thought my father was pretty dumb. After a while when I got to be 21, I was amazed to find out how much he'd learned in three years.
There was a guitar that my uncle owned and never learnt to play. He sold it to my dad, and when I heard 'Layla', that was the tune that really grabbed me. I said to my dad, 'Wait, there's a guitar, right?'
As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, I have thought about other things throughout the years.
